


His Rose and Her Thorn

by Vesperchan



Series: Tumblr Shorts [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Arranged Marriage, BAMF Haruno Sakura, BAMF Sakura, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Imperial Russia inspired, Magic, Old Gods, Prompt Fic, Star-crossed, Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt, soilders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 17:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17166341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vesperchan/pseuds/Vesperchan
Summary: Sakura is dying from a curse and the only way to survive it seems to be shedding her humanity. What else could she do after earning the love of a god? “The moment I saw you, I knew we were meant to be.”





	His Rose and Her Thorn

Sakura coughed into her hand, feeling the pinch in her throat as the sound of tearing bed sheets filled the air. She ended up falling to her knees as blood stained the spaces between her fingers. Her throat was a ragged mess and she could taste it behind her teeth even when she wasn’t hacking up blood.

The sickness had only worsened since the first few nights when a rattling roused her from her cot in the General’s tent. Ino had been too worried to ignore it and the discharge came soon after. Sakura had been so enraged when the news was delivered to her, but Ino was a general before she was Sakura’s friend, and their army had no room to support useless weight.

Sakura straightened herself and looked up the side of the mountain. Winter was a dream away, deceptively hiding in the bright colors of evergreens and leafy ferns. Only the wind betrayed the stalking of the season, and she shuddered when it tore through her.

Sakura grabbed the rough bark and pulled herself forward, unable to steadily make her way up the steepest parts without some aid or foothold. She didn’t bother to wipe the blood off her chin until she found a ledge she could rest on.  

It was slow going, making her way up the underside of the World’s Spine, but she was out of options. All the modern healers and doctors she had traveled to had found no reason for her sickness. 

Each new set of treatments only seemed to aggravate the pain in her throat that had spread into her lungs. It felt like she was filled with budding thorns, growing and curling within the confines of her body.  And like thorns, she knew her sickness was a growing thing that wouldn’t stop without serious intervention.

* * *

_“It’s a curse,” the card teller had laughed at her. Sakura hadn’t paid for a reading, but she sat down with food to trade for an answer. No metal passed between them, but the answers came easily once the rosemary bread and spiced cream was devoured._

_“If you’re so smart, why are you asking a question you already know the answer to?” The card teller asked from beneath his hood. “You didn’t pay with coin.”_

_“I’d rather not burn you,” she had answered._

_The card teller laughed with a wide mouth that let her glimpse the rows of pointed teeth all the way down. “Smart girl. Someone told you stories.”_

_“Plenty of girls are told stories.”_

_The hood covered most everything else of the elfen creature. “You listened to the stories beneath the story though. Not many do that.”_

_Sakura kept quiet as the three cards for the problem, solution, and obstacle were laid out for her._

_The Tower, the Lovers, the King of Wands, all upright. If there was ever a time to be unhappy about an upright card it was when the drawing of a crumbling tower, struck with lightning, stared back up at her._

_“I’m going to die.”_

_“If you do nothing, yes.” he pointed to the King of Wands. “If your pride does not hinder you, then there is a hope for the end of your ills.”_

_Sakura glared at the last card, representing her cure. A man and a woman, cradling a fruit between them. “Ah, but at what cost?”_

* * *

 

Sakura opened her eyes and saw her surroundings for what they were. So high up her breath was a ghost on her lips. The cold bit hardest when she rested too long, so she roused herself again and climbed up the rest of the mountain before the thorns in her throat could cripple her once more.

Far to the north, and then east some more, she knew there were places man should not tread. But as great as the danger and risk, much greater was the reward when she found the hut built on legs of tree trunks. It sat innocent enough, surrounded by a fence of human skulls and animal bones.  

“So lovely,” she muttered to herself.

She reached into her pockets and found the mint leaves that were nearly exhausted. She bit off a mouthful and crushed them between her teeth until the blood smell was gone. She almost forgot the pain as a her breath became infused with what felt like winter.

Before she could step forward, a pinch in her chest made her stagger. No blood, but plenty of pain as something shifted inside of her, growing and expanding against her boundaries. She grabbed the railing to steady herself and clenched her jaw, unable to do anything more than ride out the pain until she could walk again.

One foot in front of the other, she walked like something made out of wood until the gate was far behind her. She stopped at the roots of the tree to grab hold and heave herself up. There were no stairs to welcome visitors. If someone wanted to gain the aid of the forest witch they would need to earn it. Even as she stood on her doorstep, Sakura doubted she had done that.

On the door there were four horses painted, one white, one black, one chestnut, one flaming red. Under each horse was a knocker.

Sakura traced her hand over each painted face and whispered what she could remember of the stories. A white knight that carried the day’s bright morning in his visage, a black knight trailed the night after him like a tide, and lastly a knight on fire roared across the heavens with the heart of the sun in his eyes. These were the three knights.

She pulled on the knocker under the chestnut mare and it broke free from the door. The rest of the wood rotted and fell away, spreading a black disease across the whole door and stoop under it until there was nothing but a gap under her to fall through.

She let herself fall, doing nothing to resist the pull. Before she could impact, the roots of the tree reached out and made a net that creadeled her into a warm, fire lit room. Sakura felt like hands were what carried her down, depositing her ever so gently onto her feet. The roots withdrew like fingers and curled back into the grooves in the walls where they became seamless details.

“You’ve come a long way,” a voice cackled from behind a chair draped in more than one type of fur.

Sakura felt the voice in her blood and winced at the feel of another’s magic brushing up against her own. She had so little, she was barely anything worth recognizing among the old ones.  Some people ascribed to the idea that the old world with all its old gods and old ways of superstitious tradition were a silly notion, destined to pass into history without issue as naturally as winter passed into spring.

Sakura knew better.

Baba Chiyo raised herself up from the fur covered chair and turned around to stand in front of the greedy fire, barely contained by a grate of black iron. She smiled and there was a ripple in the air even the unmagiced could feel. Sakura shivered against it, hating how the truth in her bones screamed at her.

Seasons come as easily as they go, but they always come. Winter with all her old gods and devastations would return, and Chiyo, Baba of the tundra desert, would be at the helm of it.

“Grandmother,” Sakura whispered, taking to her knee. She refused to hold any pride in front of such a superiour creature. Her blood wouldn’t stop shivering.

“Such a respectful young blood. Tell me of your travels by my fire.”

It sounded like an invitation but she knew it was more a command than any order from a superior. Sakura did as the stories bid her and sat by the fire. A tree root dangled fruit into her hands that she took, but did not bite into. She raised it to her lips and inhaled, but didn’t ingest.

“I think I’m dying and I came to you for help.”

“You know you’re dying,” Chiyo abruptly corrected. A single boney finger raised in the air and a different tree root uncurled, led by a silver string that spun from that tip of her finger. “You wouldn’t be at my hearth for anything less.”

“It’s a truth I’d rather not admit,” Sakura said, watching the tree root being pulled by the silver thin string. It was dripping black ichor.

“The truth is a thorn in your throat.”

Sakura swallowed and only winced slightly at the feel. “I don’t want to die just yet.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t?” Chiyo teased. She waved her hand and the root curled back into place, but the black ichor was already in the palm of her hand, pooling into a pearl made out of midnight or the blood of something just as ancient. “What would you trade for your life?”

“What would you accept?”

Chiyo lifted the black pearl to her eye and stared through it at Sakura, cackling at whatever she saw. “It’s a fun curse your suffering from, but likely no better than what the other one is going through.”

“ _Other_  one?”

“You thought your thorns had no end. What grows on thorns?”

Sakura wasn’t sure if she was right, but she ventured a guess and hoped she was correct or at least amusing enough to curry some favor.

“Flowers?”

Chiyo lowered the pearl back down and hummed. “Indeed. Someone else is dying from  _your_  flowers, choking on them as you are torn asunder by your thorns.”

“Can you cure it, can you break this curse?” Sakura asked, bending forward.

“No, there is no cure for such a thing, only it’s completion.”

Sakura felt the ice in her veins but surged against it with all the anger and rage that had been building up since her first dismissal, well before her discharge. She had years of rage to burn. “You asked me what I would trade! You can save me.”

“You have such faith for a heretic.”   

Sakura swallowed what she could of her pride and her anger, but knew it still made her eyes glow with green fire. “I’m whatever I need to be to survive.”

Chiyo pinched the black pearl until it burned red, then blue, then white. It shook her hands with a violent energy her brittle fingers shouldn’t have been able to hold back. 

“Then you’ll need to be something more in order to survive this. You willing to be a god for my grandson?”

* * *

 Sakura looked a little bit like death as she eased herself across the ice where it was impossible not to catch sight of her reflection. Her veins were dark and stood out against her pale skin. The viridescent paint smeared across her eyes hid the worst of the bags, but without it she knew she was a dreadful sight.

She found the middle of the lake and planted her feet, knowing that the ice hadn’t melted or so much as cracked in over six hundred years. If it had  people would have heard about it.

She raised her fists high above her head and felt the rage swell through her blood. Fury made her bones rattle to the roots of her teeth and she roared with all the strength in her and then some before bringing her fists down atop the ice.

It shattered like glass, splintering up into chunks hungry to touch the sky. It rumbled all the way to the mountains and she started to slip into the frigid waters, only to find purchase on the twisted keratin of a ice giant’s horn.

The giant roared, twitching to life for the first time since his epic concealment during a long ago battle with gods and titans and the monsters that squabbled between them.

“Not worth it,” Sakura coughed, tasting the honey on her thorns that didn’t tear nearly as much as they once had.

The monstrosity roared, reaching up with lumbered movements to swipe at her, but Sakura crawled out of reach with all the agility spiders needed to spin their webs. She fell from his shoulders, trailing silver thread that went taunt just in time for her to reach the back of it’s knees with her short swords. She cut deep enough to sever muscles and he fell back into the ice once more, shattering most of it with the girth of his fall.

She climbed over his falling body with her swords for purchase, eyes glowing with green fire that burned in hunger for her prize. She buried her blades into his shoulder blades to free her hands and roared with a decade’s worth of war between her teeth. She saw green fire over everything and didn’t care to pull it back. She was the heir of an emerald flame and she was through putting it under a lamp.

With a snarl she dug her hands wrist deep into the painted fless of the ancient beast, burning from its blood or from something else, and pushed through his muscle and flesh, breaking bones until she found the meat of his heart.

_‘Are you too proud to admit your savagery? You like your uniform, but that’s not the truth.’_

Chiyo’s voice was a mocking gong in her brain that fed the free flames that now licked up the sides of her arms as she dug into the thrashing monster too close to death. She was hideous and monstrous and more powerful than any gun or rifle.

_‘Who were you again?’_

Sakura’s nails found his heart and she pulled with the strength of a mountain, ripping it from his chest through the back and hoisting it overhead until she was drenched in its black ichor.

 _‘Who are you, Sakura?’_  Ino hissed in a memory when she pushed Sakura against a wall with her angry fists in the wrinkles of a tattered uniform. Behind them a field filled with their enemies still burned with green fire.  _‘Are you one of_ them _, or are you one of us? Chose now before I make that choice for you,_ privet _.’_

Sakura cried out, ripping the heart in two overhead and setting the rest of the body on fire until it was nothing more than the wick of a green candle in a lake too far north for water to flow.

It took a full day for her to drag the pieces of the giant’s heart back to Chiyo but the old woman already had a fire at the edge of her forest ready to burn it down to ashes.

“You’ll be consuming these.”

Sakura groaned and Chiyo cackled.

“It smells horrible.”

“It’ll taste horrible.”

“Isn’t there a less repulsive manner to shed mortality?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but if you wanted to stay human and let those growths consume ya up from the inside, be my guest. I don’t have to go out slaying giants and titans for their bones and hearts.”

Sakura curled her lip at the memory of the titan’s marrow she had to suck dry. It hadn’t been terrible, but the change it brought on was still shamefully humbling. Her pride would not survive the rest of the ordeal.

“You’ll be meeting him after this.”

Sakura stilled, feeling an odd heat on her cheeks. “Wh-who?”

Chiyo cackled. “My handsome grandson of course.”

“I thought he was still trapped in that ice cave.” Sakura sat herself down beside the fire and hugged her knees to her chest to hide the color on her face. “I’ve already seen him.”

“He’s encased in quartz, there’s a difference. He is barred from interacting with the world but has complete control in how he may observe it. You’ll be communing with him, but he’s still trapped until you burn him out. After that, a single kiss is all it’ll take to finish off that curse without killing anyone.” Chiyo breathed deeply, inhaling thick plumes of black. “Goodness, if it was only ice you’d have him out by now.”

“How much more of a monster do I have to become before that happens?” Sakura asked.

Chiyo frowned. “If you still think like that, you’re much further away than you hope.”

Sakura glared over her knees and Chiyo’s smile was sharp. “You think I’m a monster?”     

“Yes.” Sakura knew better than to lie.

“I’m  _monstrous_  indeed, but not a  _monster_. You must become something else. Learn the difference and then embrace it before it’s too late.”

Sakura remembered her reading and the look of the King of Wands staring back up at her with all his lofty pride. She was going to die if she didn’t know how to conquer her own self.

The heart was burned to ash and mixed into a bread with honey that Sakura took her time consuming. It was bearable and she knew it didn’t have to be. For her own reasons, Chiyo was showing her a kindness.

When night fell the woman ushered her along and the roots that made the barriers of her hut lifted themselves to allow them passage down the corridor to the quartz caves.

At night when the sky lights waved like a rainbow flag in the sky the cave was a glittering cathedral of crystal colors. 

Sakura had been before when Sasori slept in the daylight and the soft details of his face, from his lashes to his lips, haunted her dreams more than she cared to admit. Chiyo’s stories of her grandson were hardly flattering, but sometimes when the fire was soft and the mead made her belly slosh she would hear the grandmother share a rare story of Sasori’s triumphs. Sakura saw the most honest Chiyo then.

“He’s awake this time, so I’ll leave you here.”

Sakura blinked and Chiyo was gone, winked out of the here to somewhere considered ‘there’ as her magics dictated.

Sakura stared up at the largest crystal of white quartz that dripped from the ceiling. Inside, suspended in what seemed like mid fall, a boy with crimson red hair and soft lips rested. Sakura stopped at the base of his crystal and his eyes flew open. There was a horrible scraping sound as he moved his arms, rearranging the quartz matter around him to allow him to push down to the base of his prison.

“Hey,” Sakura whispered, hating how hot her face felt. She probably looked awful. She was still covered in black ichor mostly and too sick to manage any measure of vibrancy. Limply, she waved her hand.

Sasori’s eyes were soft like tired embers in a fire. They sparked with different shades of amber and brown. “Sakura,” he said. It echoed in the quartz and made her teeth tingle. “I’m seeing you here, finally.”

Sakura ran her thumbs over the rest of her fingers, twitching for something to do with her hands. “It’s nice to finally meet you, which is weird since Chiyo says you’ve…um, uh, watched me before and I’ve heard so much about you. Last time I was here you were sleeping.”

Sasori pressed his palm against the barrier between her and him. “I have watched you, yes. I wish I hadn’t sometimes, because it’s only made this imprisonment more terrible. I’ve envied your adventures.” His smile made her quiver. “You’re quite brilliant.”

Color caught her attention and she turned to face the source. There was a flash of green and she saw a flickering of figures on a battlefield. Sakura flinched when she recognized the private uniform and the dead bodies of her enemies from a decade ago. Her hair had been long, pink, and unbraided. When she ran it flapped with an after echo of green fire to match her burning eyes.

Sakura forced herself to look away from the disaster. Sasori frowned and twitched his fingers to erase the illusion. “You’re upset.” He sounded worried.

Sakura tried to manage a smile. “I don’t think you’ve seen me at my best, I’m afraid.”

“Why do you think that?”

Sakura reached up behind her head and felt the messy braid. It wasn’t tight anymore, but it was still held back. “You let something like that lose on the world and maybe there won’t be a world left. Even armies have no use for such a wild thing they can’t control.”

“What is the world for if not for us?” he queried, raising his chin. “You are a measure of balance in an over abundant world. There is no winter without spring and there is no life without death. There is no shame in being on the darker end of the scale.”

Sakura rolled her shoulders and tried to grin. “There’s a little shame.”   

“I disagree. You think like a human.”

“I am a human.”

“You are not done,” he corrected, drifting up into the quartz only enough so that he was standing instead of crouched down at the base. “I am a god of the tundra desert and I am a cultivator or winter. Few find shelter in my makings. Should I feel any shame in that? Should I deny my nature?”

Sakura watched the crystals play pictures that pieced together a long, white, barren landscape that traveled on forever. The White Desert at the end of the world where few gods even dwelt.

“You’re beautiful,” Sakura said before she could think about what she was saying.

The illusions shuttered and Sasori dropped to the very base of his crystal to cough deep heaving hacks. Sakura rushed there but couldn’t go any further when she touched the crystal. Between his fingers and under his hand dropped the heads of different colored roses, shedding petals like a sick bird shed feathers.

“Sasori!” she cried out in alarm. She knew he was immortal, but he looked to be in pain as more and more rose heads fell to the bottom of the crystal.

He shook his head and coughed one last time before spitting out the last of his petals and breathing deep. His eyes were watery and red but it was the pretty dusting of pink on his cheeks and the tips of his ears that made her pause.

“Is there no end to your torment of me?” he laughed, smiling in spite of the mess of petals melting at his feet.

“Sorry.”

“Never think you have to apologize to me. You’re my equal.”

“Equals can make mistakes.”

“That,” his voice rumbled, “was not a mistake.”

Sakura clenched the fabric of her tunic above where her lungs would be. The thorns pinched still, but it was her heart that made her ache. “You’re teasing me.”

“I hope so, otherwise I’d appear quite foolish.” He leaned against the divide. “How am I doing?”

“I feel terribly unsettled.”

His grin was rakish. “Good.”

Sakura glanced down at the last few rose heads before they melted into his cursed prison. “I’m sorry you’re suffering because of me. It won’t be much longer before I’ll be able to burn you free.”

Sasori was quiet for a moment before lifting his hand to the crystal and pressing his palm flat. “Sakura,” he rumbled. “I’d suffer a thousand years more for just this, right here right now. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you for saddling you with the worse end of this curse. It was never my intention.”

Sakura flapped her hand dismissively. ”Chiyo already explained it, I know. It’s a curse of fate. You couldn’t help it any more than she could. I understand enough.”  

“You understand I’m in love with you?”

Sakura sucked in a breath. Chiyo had said as much, and she suspected it with all the heavy implications, but to hear him confess so boldly rattled her to her bones.

“Ye-yeah, I uh, um I guessed that much I think.”

Sasori watched her with an unwavering stare. The color in his eyes shifted like the flame in a fireplace that crawled up the logs and she wondered if her own eyes looked like that to him, only in shades of green. Chiyo had called her the heir of an Emerald Fire like that meant something.

“I am your fate as I am your slave. Before you feet I am debased. You are my hell and my salvation for as long as the stars burn and then longer still. I will be your heart and your breath, as you will be mine. Fear me for I am frightening, but love me for I am nothing but soft edges at the mercy of your love.”

Sakura shivered and knew her face was heated with color. She knew engagement vows when she heard them, but she had never heard them as elaborate as she had before.

“I’m not so grand as that,” she whispered, afraid of the sound of her voice.

Sasori pressed up against the quartz and it almost cracked from the pressure. His hair drifted up away from his face as ancient magic swirled around him.

“You are everything,” he hissed like a man desperate to be heard and the room around them rattled with the force of his voice. “You are my salvation and my undoing. The moment I saw you, I knew we were meant to be with all the agony of a starving man in the wilderness. Sakura. I see you, I know you, and I am only in want of you more for it.”

She hated how she felt like she was made out of warm chocolate. He stoaked a terrible fire in her and she felt the tears on her eyes without knowing when they had shed themselves.

“Sasori, I don’t know what to do with someone who loves me.”

He seemed to settle, but only slightly. “Free me and I will show you. There is much I may yet teach you, my bride.”


End file.
